Learning with a guitar teacher vs learning online Part 1

Learning with a Teacher vs Learning Online

There is often quite a lot of debate when it comes to the question “should go to a guitar teacher or learn using online sources?”. To answer this, I will have to go back 12 years to when I first started to learn guitar. I have used online videos and tablature to improve my guitar playing, and still do to this very day.

However, I went to a guitar teacher after around 2 years of trying to figure things out on my own, and what an eye-opening experience it was. I was 14 years of age and my teacher was an incredibly good rock guitarist, and an even better critique of my inaccurate and out of time playing.

I was learning the song ‘Black Night’ by Deep Purple, watching instructional videos and attempting to read tablature for the first time, and thought it was sounding pretty good. I excitedly went to a teacher after learning it, and as it turns out, I was wrong.

I started playing it, and only a couple of notes in he told me to stop. I was thinking “oh man, this is gonna be a long session”. Instead it turned out to be the best first guitar lesson I could have asked for, propelling me to push myself further and exceed my own expectations.

My guitar was out of tune, which was why he stopped me in the first instance. I was able to correct this and continue with the song. He stopped me for a second time after playing the opening riff once through only to tell me that my timing was off.

This was something that my untrained ear would not have noticed had I carried on without a teacher.

Incidentally, this was a huge turning point in my short playing experience as he was able to point out this imperfection in my playing and offer a way of negating it. 

From that moment on I realised my guitar learning journey was about to be very different with a guitar teacher rather than facing this journey on my own. …